John McNicholas: Bomb saved more than it killed

Letter writer Randy Zaucha should depend on someone — anyone — besides a journalist for his history. He says, encouraged by Amy Goodwin, we didn't have to drop the atom bomb on Japan. All we had to do was wait for the Russians.

The Russians didn't declare war on Japan until three days after the Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroshima bombing. They were busy ignoring Japan's entreaties to intervene and extend peace terms to the Allies, and planning to grab Manchuria and the Kuriles.

Japan's government harbored a significant peace faction, but its official line was "no surrender." Then-Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki said on July 28, 1945, Japan would ignore the Potsdam call for unconditional surrender.

Truman couldn't wait for surrender. Our Army and Marines had just ended the brutal battle for Okinawa, where more than 82,000 American fighting men fell — that's 1,000 a day. Japan had lost more than 110,000 soldiers. Nobody knows the civilian toll — maybe 100,000, maybe more. Together, that's hundreds of thousands more casualties than Hiroshima's — and the total approaches Chinese estimates of 300,000 civilians murdered by racist Japanese soldiers in Nanking.

After Japan's suicidal defense of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Truman faced the invasion of the Japan itself. Planners feared more than a million U.S. casualties alone.

Here's an opinion: Truman didn't have a choice. If the bomb could save just one American fighting man's life or limb, he had to use it.

Japan likely would have surrendered without the bombs — maybe in a week, maybe a month. But that's irrelevant. How many lives would have been lost while we waited? And what's an American soldier worth? One enemy life? 100?

Truman decided one U.S. soldier is worth as many enemy lives as it takes to compel surrender. Ultimately, the bomb saved many more lives than it took — American lives, Japanese, Australian, British, Pacific Islander, Chinese ...

And without the bomb, millions of people like me, whose fathers or grandfathers were headed for Kyushu, might not be around to debate the ethics of victory. Or to praise writers who sympathize with the terrorists trying hard to exterminate a nation and a race.